


Impatience is an Undermined Virtue

by trascendenza



Category: Psych
Genre: Black Character, Character of Color, Community: three weeks for dw, Gen, POV Female Character, chromatic protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-03
Updated: 2010-05-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Mira had tried to rally them, but they'd shaken their heads, waving her on, apparently knowing it wouldn't be any use to try to talk her into staying.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Impatience is an Undermined Virtue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Women of Psych, Leverage, and White Collar Commentathon](http://trascendenza.dreamwidth.org/47387.html?thread=337179#cmt337179) for 3W4DW.

Mira was dripping with sweat. Her clothes were plastered to her body, bunched in all the places her perspiration was collecting; the small of her back, the insides of her elbows, the insides of her knees. She felt chafed and raw and gross, and the amount of money she would have paid for a shower right then would have been _obscene_.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a shower to be found for hundreds of miles and all the water she had she needed for, oh, right, _surviving_. That was nominally important.

The straps from her pack were digging into her shoulder and her companions had dropped off miles back; they'd wanted to stop for some more delicious reconstituted dehydrated protein mix. Mira had tried to rally them, but they'd shaken their heads, waving her on, apparently knowing it wouldn't be any use to try to talk her into staying.

_Be patient_, her father used to tell her, gazing down at her from his giant wood-and-leather chair. _The good things will come to you._

Mira had taken that to heart, though not in the way he'd intended; she'd decided that she would get to the good things first. Why wait, if they were out there? So she kept walking, the dust gathering at the corners of her eyes and the sun beating down on her forehead, and she walked up and up and up the mountain until all she could hear was the sound of her footfalls and the birds and the wind.

She looked up. The summit was within sight, it was _right there_, and she dropped her pack, untying her canteen and feeling the pressure start to build in her limbs, the slight prickling at the back of her neck and at the bottoms of her feet, the feeling that something _great_ was about to happen, which she _loved_, which was the reason she never got tired of that breathless feeling at the precipice right before the rollercoaster tipped, which was why even when she was blistered and yucky and tired she couldn't imagine stopped when she was so close. She walked right to the precipice and stopped.

"About time," she said, opening her mouth and dumping the contents of her canteen on her face as she untied her hair, the water filling her mouth and running across her cheeks and down her neck. She laughed, shaking her head back and forth and letting the droplets fly off her, her curls spilling out all around her, and she blinked the water out of her eyes, walking the few last steps with a premonitory tingling sensation that this was going to be a singular moment, the kind you couldn't just wait around for. Mountains, after all, didn't stoop down to pick you up.


End file.
